Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

I added a set of random images in the right sidebar. Because Facebook doesn’t offer users the ability to publish openly accessible RSS feeds of photos (booooo!), I had to do a bit of a hack job to make this work. All images were downloaded from my profile using FaceDown. I could have just re-uploaded them to WordPress right then using the new image uploader, but to be more efficient (I was importing around 150 photos), I uploaded a zip file to my server, unzipped the file in Putty, then brought the images into the Media Library using a handy WP importer plugin called Add from Server. The images themselves are then displayed with the sidebar widget in NextGen Gallery. And yes, I’m aware that this entire post was only interesting to about 7 people in the world, none of whom read this blog.

Recently I’ve noticed that I have friends on Facebook who have become fans of not only music groups, movies, and even companies, but also specific nations. Apple devotees are one thing, but do we really need nation-based fanboys? This behavior smells to me like another example of Stuff White People Like.

What does it even mean to become a “Fan of Israel?” Do you go to all its events? Do you read the newsletters? Do you tell people that you were into it even before it got big?

What about people who are fans of Israel but not fans of America? Will Dick Cheney send his secret police to raid those kids? Or what about people who are fans of Lee Greenwood but not fans of America? The America group should get an M&A team and do a buyout of the Greenwood group. Same interests, now with streamlined management. Hellooooo synergy.

I’m convinced that Facebook’s API is on course to become the single most important platform on the web - if someone can come up with a killer app for it. Since launching in May, thousands of apps have appeared but none that appear to be must-haves for now. Stanford is now offering a course in Facebook app building and Widgetbox today released a tool for creating apps with no knowledge of code. Several venture funds have created mini funds just to invest in Facebook apps. Oodles of valuable marketing-ready user data (and presumably the media dollars of the Fortune 500 companies that covet it) are up for grabs to whoever can successfully build the first must-have Facebook app.

One thing that’s interesting to me about all of this are the parallels between the development of new Facebook apps and the original web development (web1.0 or whatever you want to call it) 10 years ago and what we’re seeing now. In the late 90’s, we saw many companies scrambling to “internetize” their existing products (witness NBC.com in 1996) without much understanding of how to reach an audience or what to do with them once they arrived at their site, I feel like several Facebook apps are attempting a bit of the same thing right now.

Every web-based widget that’s out there now has (or will soon have) a Facebook app. Among the apps added to my Facebook profile are feeds for del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Last.FM and Twitter. What does this add to my Facebook experience right now? Not sure yet, other than an overwhelmingly larger amount of information that might as well distract my friends from my profile as much as it draws them to it. Call it one part late-90’s portal nightmare, two parts awesome.

Right now I get the feeling that I’m the rare TechCrunch50k-type user who drools over integrated solutions on a network like Facebook’s, but I’m still not sure how this app race is going to play out longer term. One thing that’s certain is that considering the enormous number of apps already put out since May (CNET reported that there were 1,500 apps in the first month alone) will keep getting better and more fully featured. The tougher question is what we’ll see that will blow away all the others.